{"product_id":"2940013618183","title":"NATIONAL RHYMES OF THE NURSERY","description":"[Illustration: INTRODUCTION]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a good many years since Peacock, in one of those curiously\u003cbr\u003eill-tempered and not particularly happy attacks on the Lake poets, with\u003cbr\u003ewhich he chose to diversify his earlier novels, conceived, as an\u003cbr\u003eornament of \"Mainchance Villa,\" a grand allegorical picture, depicting\u003cbr\u003ethe most famous characters of English Nursery Tales, Rhymes,\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;c.--Margery Daw, Jack and Jill, the other Jack who built the House, the\u003cbr\u003echief figures of \"that sublime strain of immortal genius\" called\u003cbr\u003e_Dickory Dock_, and the third Jack, Horner, eating a symbolic Christmas\u003cbr\u003epie. At the date of _Melincourt_, in which this occurs, its even then\u003cbr\u003eadmirable author was apt to shoot his arrows rather at a venture; and it\u003cbr\u003emay be hoped, without too much rashness, that he did not mean to speak\u003cbr\u003edisrespectfully of the \"sublime strain of immortal genius\" itself, but\u003cbr\u003eonly of what he thought Wordsworth's corrupt following of that and\u003cbr\u003esimilar things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNevertheless, if he had lived a little longer, or if (for he lived quite\u003cbr\u003elong enough) he had been in the mind for such game, he might have found\u003cbr\u003efresh varieties of it in certain more modern handlings of the same\u003cbr\u003esubject. Since the Brothers Grimm founded modern folklore, it has\u003cbr\u003erequired considerable courage to approach nursery songs and nursery\u003cbr\u003etales in any but a spirit of the severest \"scientism,\" which I presume\u003cbr\u003eto be the proper form for the method of those who call themselves\u003cbr\u003e\"scientists.\" We have not only had investigations--some of them by no\u003cbr\u003emeans unfruitful or uninteresting investigations--into certain things\u003cbr\u003ewhich are, or may be, the originals of these artless compositions in\u003cbr\u003ehistory or in popular manners. We have not only had some of their queer\u003cbr\u003everbal jingles twisted back again into what may have been an articulate\u003cbr\u003eand authentic meaning. I do not know that many of them have been made\u003cbr\u003eout to be sun-myths; but that yesterday popular, to-day rather\u003cbr\u003ediscredited, system of exposition is very evidently as applicable to\u003cbr\u003ethem as to anything else. The older variety of mystical and moral\u003cbr\u003einterpretation having gone out of fashion before they had emerged from\u003cbr\u003ethe contempt of the learned, it has not been much applied to them,\u003cbr\u003ethough the temptation is great, for, as King Charles observes in\u003cbr\u003e\"Woodstock,\" most things in the world remind one of the tales of Mother\u003cbr\u003eGoose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the most special attentions that nursery rhymes have received have,\u003cbr\u003eperhaps, taken the form of the elaborate and ingenious divisions\u003cbr\u003eattempted by Halliwell and others. Indeed, something of the kind has\u003cbr\u003ebeen so common that the absence here of anything similar may excite some\u003cbr\u003esurprise, and look like disrespect to a scientific age. The omission,\u003cbr\u003ehowever, is designed, and a reason or two may be rendered for it.\u003cbr\u003eHalliwell (to take the most generally known instance) has no less than\u003cbr\u003eseventeen compartments in which he stows remorselessly these \"things\u003cbr\u003ethat are old and pretty,\" to apply to them a phrase that Lamb loved.\u003cbr\u003eThere are, it seems, historical nursery rhymes, literal nursery rhymes;\u003cbr\u003enursery rhymes narrative, proverbial, scholastic, lyrical, riddlesome;\u003cbr\u003erhymes dealing with charms, with gaffers and gammers, with games, with\u003cbr\u003eparadoxes, with lullabies, with jingles, with love and matrimony, with\u003cbr\u003enatural (I wish he had called it unnatural) history, with accumulative\u003cbr\u003estories, with localities, with relics. It may be permitted to cry \"Mercy\u003cbr\u003eon us,\" when one thinks of the poor little wildings, so full of nature\u003cbr\u003eand, if not ignorant of art, of an art so cunningly concealed, being\u003cbr\u003esubjected to the trimmings and torturings of the _Ars Topiaria_ after\u003cbr\u003ethis fashion. The division is clearly arbitrary and non-natural; it is\u003cbr\u003eoften what logicians very properly object to as a \"cross\"-division; it\u003cbr\u003eleads to the inclusion of many things which are not properly nursery\u003cbr\u003erhymes at all; and it necessitates, or at least gives occasion to, a\u003cbr\u003evast amount of idle talk. For instance, take King Arthur, this way, that\u003cbr\u003eway, which way you please: as a hero of history, as a great central\u003cbr\u003efigure of romance, or even (I grieve to say a learned friend of mine is\u003cbr\u003ewont to speak of him so) as a \"West-Welsh thief.\" Are we called upon in\u003cbr\u003ethe very slightest degree to connect any of these Arthurs with the\u003cbr\u003eartist of the bag-pudding? to discuss what was the material that Queen\u003cbr\u003eGuinevere preferred for frying, and to select the most probable\u003cbr\u003e\"noblemen\" from the Table Round? Does anybody, except as a rather\u003cbr\u003eponderous joke, care to discuss whether King Cole was really father of\u003cbr\u003eConstantine's mother, and had anything to do with Colchester?","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47165813162224,"sku":"2940013618183","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013618183_p0.jpg?v=1763583059","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013618183","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}